Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 23rd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Cram.

I would now like to call on Mr. Del Anaquod to take the floor. Mr. Anaquod is the chief operating officer of the First Nations University of Canada.

You have five minutes for your presentation, Mr. Anaquod.

[Del Anaquod, Chief Operating Officer, First Nations University of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'll keep my comments to under five minutes.

First off, I welcome this opportunity to talk to you about the success of the First Nations University of Canada. One of the problems we've had is getting our story out there. Previous speakers have talked passionately about some of our successes, but I want to highlight again a number of those successes.

The decision of the federal and provincial governments to cut off funding to First Nations University on April 1, 2010, has direct impacts on: 2,000 students; 350 classes; over 200 employees, including the largest number of aboriginal Ph.D.s in Canada; 3,300 graduates; 70 research projects; and the largest concentration of indigenous programming in the world. Throughout its history, tens of thousands of students and business leaders have taken classes and courses at First Nations University of Canada.

The government's decision has more far-reaching impacts beyond these. It affects all Canadians and all of Saskatchewan's citizens.

In regard to our success, I would like to briefly highlight the impact of First Nations University's success, which is our alumni. As previous speakers mentioned this afternoon, this is a measure of our success. Our alumni includes doctors, nurses, health care providers, teachers, dental therapists, business leaders, engineers, scientists, social workers, and lawyers. We have produced hundreds of civil servants for the federal and provincial workforces and another thousand for first nations governments.

First Nations University is one of the most successful producers of first nations taxpayers in Saskatchewan. Our university draws students from across Canada, which contributes to the Saskatchewan economy and to our reputation in Canada and abroad.

Thousands of non-first nations students have completed our courses as requirements in academic programs, including justice, police studies, women's studies, education, and social work.

First Nations University provides the most unique program in the world. We offer bicultural education so that our students are completely qualified for work in the mainstream and have the additional training they need to serve in our communities.

I want to briefly touch on some of the budgetary shortfalls and jurisdictional issues we have faced since our inception.

The true measure of a great institution is not only its successes, but the obstacles and adversities it has overcome. Throughout our 34-year history, First Nations University has faced ongoing budgetary shortfalls due to federal and provincial jurisdictional disputes, and this in turn has created uncertainty and hardships. Each has a role to play: the province for its jurisdiction over universities, and the federal government for its responsibilities for Indians and lands reserved for Indians, and its treaty and aboriginal rights and constitutional obligations under section 35.

We take responsibility for some of the past actions that have happened. First Nations University has experienced internal governance and management issues. For this, we take full responsibility. However, we should not allow the decisions of a few to affect the success of many. The new interim board and leadership have addressed governance and management problems.

Based on the negative actions of a few, to shut down an institution that has had so many success stories and provides for the future of so many is unthinkable and irresponsible. It has taken many, many people to build this institution over a 34-year period and only a few to potentially destroy it. Governments have chosen to highlight the actions of these few and ignore the success of the majority.

We have a challenging future. As citizens of Saskatchewan and Canadian citizens, we are facing many challenges. One is our youth and the future of our great country. In Saskatchewan, we have over 60,000 aboriginal youth in the first nations and provincial K-to-12 system. As I sit here today, one out of every three students in Saskatchewan is aboriginal, and this number is continuously on the rise.

We are also facing a 50% dropout rate. Thirty thousand aboriginal youth will drop out in the next 10 years. Where will they go? Will they join the 2,000 street gang members that we now have in the province? Or is the answer jails? Over 80% of the people in our provincial jails are aboriginal people. That's not the answer.

We have close to 5,000 children currently in out-of-home care; 75% are aboriginal. We struggle to find aboriginal foster homes for these children. Within these marginalized and frustrated youth, we are sowing the seeds of homegrown problems. As a Canadian, this is a statistic I am not proud of and a future I do not relish.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We're over time now, Mr. Anaquod. Perhaps you could just wrap up.

[Del Anaquod]

Sure.

What is the answer? One of the answers is First Nations University of Canada. The First Nations University is a bridge between two cultures. The Queen, on her visit to our university in 2005, laid the foundation of that bridge by presenting us with a stone from Balmoral Castle.

Let us not tear down that bridge. Let us ensure stable, long-term funding so that, like our graduates in the past, successive aboriginal generations will become productive and contributing Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Anaquod.

We now go to our second video conference witness, and that will be Mr. Lorne Dennis.

[Lorne Dennis, As an Individual]

All right, coming through.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Great. So it works when we want it to.

You've heard the audio here, Mr. Dennis. We're delighted that you could join us here this afternoon from Edmonton.

Members may know that Mr. Dennis is a former chief financial officer for the university.

Mr. Dennis, you have five minutes for your presentation.

[Lorne Dennis]

Thank you so much.

Thank you for giving me, as an individual, the opportunity to address the committee. As I'm not representing any group, I suspect the flavour of my comments may be somewhat different from what you'll hear from others, and I beg your forgiveness if I may not be quite as politically correct as some.

The issue I'd like to address is whether there is a significant long-term value in keeping FNUC open and operational.

Let me give you a little bit of background as to why I have anything at all to say on this topic. I became connected with the First Nations University of Canada in the last half of 2004 and the first half of 2005 when I was under contract to the school. I was indeed the senior financial officer.

I came to FNUC as a skeptic. I was a management consultant, an MBA with a 15-year history of dealing with businesses in crisis--bankruptcies, insolvencies, and turnarounds. I had seen it all from the perspective of bad management, and I was led to believe that I would see more of it at FNUC.

I found the school to be a place of extremes. I was impressed with the overall competence of the staff. I was also profoundly struck by their commitment and passion for the school. Conversely, I was extremely frustrated by the ongoing interference of the FSIN, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, in both operations and financial processes.

I worked at the school for about a year. In July of 2005, following Dr. Eber Hampton's retirement as president of FNUC, I was instructed to use funds belonging to Dr. Hampton's Indigenous Peoples' Health Research Centre for FNUC operations. I refused, and offered my resignation--or, perhaps more accurately, I terminated my contract at that time. So that's my connection.

Why is FNUC important? Let me make a couple of general comments from my perspective. Higher education is aligned with greater employment opportunities within Canadian society. If we are going to be concerned about growing aboriginal employment, post-secondary education for aboriginal peoples needs to be preserved and developed.

Those of us in the west and the north are painfully aware of the need for both skilled aboriginal workers and aboriginal professionals. First nations people understandably and correctly demand that they be participants in northern development, but they need the educational and intercultural tools to do so.

First nations population growth is explosive, running at six times the national average. Where aboriginal peoples exercise control over their own education, success rates are dramatically improved. However, aboriginal involvement in post-secondary education still lags well behind that of the non-aboriginal population. FNUC, I would suggest, is a bright light in this relative darkness.

First nations, Métis, and other indigenous peoples' success in higher education will breed more success, and it will also fuel our country's economic engine. As a corollary, it will reduce social assistance.

Let me make some FNUC-specific comments. First Nations University of Canada is a unique institution, growing out of the Indian Federated College, founded by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. When it became FNUC, it expanded to include all indigenous people of Canada. Its staff and faculty are almost all first nations and Métis, and are competent as well as committed. Nevertheless, the school is not exclusive. It offers higher education in a first nations-friendly environment, but provides that education not just to first nations folks but to all who choose to attend.

A culturally compatible education at FNUC provides the tools for first nations and Métis people to achieve academically. A vanilla, heterogeneous approach is much less successful than a culturally compatible or culturally relevant program.

What I observed at FNUC was that they empower students intellectually, socially, and emotionally. The school uses specific first nations culture, including cultural objects and symbols, to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The school's faculty create a bridge between first nations students' experience and their education while still meeting the needs of the curriculum. Its approach to teaching utilizes first nations background, knowledge, and experience to frame and help inform each professor's lessons and methodology. Then the experience is reinforced back again through its own affirmation of first nations culture. And it works.

Now, in my opinion, using the current governance structure, or indeed any governance structure that gives a political organization control, will not succeed. Points have been made before with regard to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and their long-standing issues, as well as NFUC's volatile history. It clearly shows a governance incompatibility with regard to the school and its political masters. There are other governance models--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Excuse me, Mr. Dennis. Could I ask you to sum up now? We are a bit over time, so if you could just bring it to a close, that would be great.

[Lorne Dennis]

Thank you.

I guess the question then becomes, is it wiser to repair or to allow the broken institution to die and then start fresh? While a greenfield approach can be attractive, in the business world it's an option that's seldom chosen. It's much more difficult to start a new business than to save one that's not completely gone.

Apart from politics, NFUC has been a success in every way. Rather than ignoring those success and giving up on the vision, I strongly believe we should be remedying the clear and identifiable problems and then moving forward.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dennis.

Now we'll go to our final witness, certainly by no means the least. Joining us from the University of Victoria, we have the executive director for the university, Nikki Macdonald.

Ms. Macdonald, by video conference.

[Nikki Macdonald, Executive Director, Government Relations, University of Victoria]

Okay, I'm on. Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Yes, and as you've probably heard, we have approximately five minutes for your presentation.

I'll note for all of our witnesses that after this presentation we'll go to questions from members.

Please go ahead. You have the floor.

[Nikki Macdonald]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for the opportunity for the University of Victoria to speak to you today.

Dr. Lalonde and I are here to speak about broader opportunities for first nation students in post-secondary education and, in particular, to share with the committee today the great success we've had here at the University of Victoria. Our success over the past decade has been increasing the number of first nation students at the University of Victoria from 64 students in 2000 to over 700 students in both graduate and undergraduate programs today.

I will provide you with a brief overview of some of those innovative programs at UVic and then Dr. Lalonde will speak specifically to the LE,NONET project, which is a national research program that has been under way at the University of Victoria for the past six years. He will share with you a preview of the final results of that program.

In 1996, as part of its strategic plan, the University of Victoria made a commitment to develop innovative ways to make our programs more accessible for first nations peoples. This commitment has led to a number of innovative programs on campus, including: community outreach programs to aboriginal youth to enhance science, technology, engineering, and math skills; many youth student camps; an elders program on campus to support students, faculty, and staff; an aboriginal teacher education program; and, more recently, the opening of First Peoples House, which creates a welcoming and inviting environment for UVic aboriginal students that respects and acknowledges their cultures and values.

We also continue to work to further the partnership through research, with organizations such as the Centre for Aboriginal Health Research; the aboriginal transitions research project, which is examining how to support students in their transition to public post-secondary institutions; and the first nations partnership program, which trains community members in early childhood care and education in their communities, thus incorporating traditional knowledge and practices with the UVic School of Child Care and Youth Care curriculum.

These are just a few of the programs on campus at UVic. Dr. Lalonde is going to speak more specifically to LE,NONET, the research project.

[Dr. Chris Lalonde, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and committee members.

I want to begin by acknowledging that I'm speaking to you from the traditional territories of the Coast and Straits Salish peoples, and I've been asked to give an overview of the LE,NONET project.

LE,NONET is a Sencoten word, a Straits Salish word, that means roughly “success after enduring many hardships”. It was a pilot project funded by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, with the aim of enhancing the success of aboriginal undergraduate students at the University of Victoria.

This was a four-year research project. We developed a set of programs. We delivered them to 200 individual students, and we're currently evaluating the results.

Our programs included two financial aid programs, one a bursary program that would provide aboriginal undergraduate students with up to $5,000 a year for their education, and the other an emergency relief funding program, because we discovered that students often have to endure a temporary financial crisis to complete their education.

We had a preparation seminar that included general history on aboriginal peoples and specific information about the first nations of these territories. It prepared students to do research apprenticeships and community internships.

Research apprenticeships matched a student in our program with a faculty member, and they would work together on a research project of mutual interest to them. They received a course credit and a small stipend. Community internships matched a student with someone in a community or an aboriginal organization, again to work on a project of mutual interest and benefit.

We had a peer mentoring program that matched more senior aboriginal students with incoming students to help them navigate the university. And we had a staff and faculty cultural training component that helped our faculty and staff in their interactions with aboriginal students.

Now, in terms of the funding that we distributed directly to the students, we gave out nearly $900,000, through the bursary and emergency aid program. We gave out $230,000, roughly, for each of the mentoring, research apprenticeship, and internship programs . That works out to about $4,100 for each student who was in our programs.

The question now is how do measure the success of that investment? Was it worth it?

There are two ways you can do that. The first way, the more standard way, is to just look at graduation and retention rates: did the students who were in our programs have higher retention and graduation rates than the ones who weren't? But also, measuring success as it's defined by students and communities, did the programs contribute to the student's sense of identity as an aboriginal person? Did it make them feel a part of the aboriginal community on campus?

We had three comparison groups: 1,000 students who attended the university in the five years before our programs began, the comparison group; then our 200 aboriginal student participants who elected to take part in our projects; and 819 non-participants, that is, other aboriginal students on campus who elected not to participate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Professor Lalonde, we'll have to try to wrap it up there. We're a little over time right now. Could you just bring that to a close? Then we'll go to questions.

[Dr. Chris Lalonde]

Sure.

Here's what we found. For our participants, the continuation rate was 55%. For non-participants, it was 24%, so you get twice the continuation. The withdrawal rate for our participants was 13%, compared to 48% for students who didn't participate, so two-thirds less withdrawal. Thirty-two percent of our students graduated during the study compared to 26% of the non-participants. Ninety-two percent of them said the program contributed to their success. Eighty percent said it made them feel part of the aboriginal community. Seventy percent said it increased their sense of aboriginal identity. Eighty-two percent said it increased their understanding of aboriginal issues.

So from our point of view, an investment of $4,100 per student pays off quite well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, both.

Thank you to all our witnesses for the presentations this evening.

At this point, we will go to questions from members. We'll start with a seven-minute question round.

For the benefit of our witnesses and those of you who have not been through this committee process before, seven minutes includes the time for the question and the answer. So keeping them as succinct as possible is always helpful, and members will be able to get more questions in and find more information that we need to do our work.

Let's begin with our first question from Mr. Russell.

Go ahead, Mr. Russell. You have seven minutes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening to all our witnesses. Thank you for being patient as we did our parliamentary duties.

My question goes to Minister Norris.

I first want to thank you and many others who have been in this working group trying to look for solutions to keep First Nations University open. I believe you and so many others understand the value of it. When I listened to the presentation from the University of Victoria, it certainly said to me that what First Nations University does is just the kind of work that's needed. The University of Victoria might be able to add something to that because of its success, but First Nations University certainly already has it in many respects.

Minister Norris, I want to ask about the MOU that's reportedly been signed by all four parties. Does this MOU, in your view, facilitate processes whereby you will have to have additional guarantees?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Just hold that thought for a moment, Mr. Russell.

Go ahead, Mr. Duncan.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we've already been here in the previous session. We said we weren't going to go back here. Here we are talking about this seminal document once again, which has not been distributed to the committee. It's a game changer, potentially. You're going right back to the same subject again that we said we weren't going to.

I would request that the chair rule that this is off limits.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

There is no procedural ability to withhold those documents if they have been circulated to members previously. They can refer to them. As I said before, it would be helpful if more of the members were privy to them. However, the point of order is not upheld. There's no procedural problem here.

We'll go back to Mr. Russell. His question is in order.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

To continue on, the MOU that has been signed between the four parties...at least reportedly; that's what we've been told, and we understand. Does this, Minister Norris, in your view facilitate a way forward for First Nations University to keep its doors open for the Government of Saskatchewan to provide the $5.2 million?

With that, am I understanding that you're asking that the federal government provide their funding of $7.2 million, which they had previously provided to the First Nations University?

[Rob Norris]

Thank you very much, sir, for the question.

While there is and will remain much work to do, we think the document, the MOU, provides a blueprint or a path forward for the institution. It's a four-year agreement that will see over the course of the first year, essentially, an independent entity helping to oversee the financial situation, then the University of Regina stepping in for the final three years, playing a greater role.

We think there's a great degree of prudence here. In the first measure, if I understand your questions, yes, I have confidence that as long as the conditions within the agreement are met and can be met, then certainly this provides a pathway involving multiple years. Again, our goal is to provide that balance of greater certainty for students and greater accountability for taxpayers.

Regarding the second part of your question, as I understand it, sir, that is regarding the federal dollars, I'll draw on a recent article in the Regina Leader-Post, quoting the member of Parliament for Regina—Qu'Appelle. He said, “Scheer said he will do what he can to ensure that the $7 million stays in the province.”

Certainly, from where we sit, one of our initial principles as we made our decision was that these federal dollars should stay in Saskatchewan. The reference point for us was that this was not a budgetary decision taken by the province. This was a decision after much deliberation that was meant to ensure greater accountability within this institution. Certainly, for us, we want to ensure these dollars stay in Saskatchewan. Today I'm in a position, possessing the signed MOU, to say certainly we have every confidence that the best way to do that to is to ensure these federal dollars--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Minister, could I just interrupt you there for a moment? We have another point of order here. I'm sorry.

Go ahead.